“It’s crazy to compare what the emergency responders did during that time, but a spirit has to start somewhere,” MacLean said. “You can’t help but be struck by the players and the way they play these games. They are like police officers. They are like firefighters. You can’t fight fire with ego . . . The pain these men have faced. The price they keep on paying. The hearts they keep on lifting.”

Huge faux pas by MacLean, and he's paying for it big time.

But I like the writer's take:

"The people kicking MacLean this morning are savvy enough to lay back, raise an eyebrow sky-high in print and let amateurs do the real hatchet work in the comments sections and on Twitter. That’s how a character gets assassinated these days.

More importantly, it’s another excuse to prime the motor on the Outrage Machine. That thing’s running 24/7 these days.

Outrage is becoming the only fuel of the sports conversation — whether it’s Amar’e Stoudamire’s temper tantrum or John Tortorella’s monosyllablism or Cole Hamels’ comments about a message sent by baseball or Mike Rizzo’s comments about Hamels’ comments or . . . it just doesn’t end. And that’s only the last week.

We’re all sitting around waiting for someone to screw up in public, so that we can vent righteously. The size of the offence isn’t an issue any more. Whether it’s actually an offence — or, as I would suggest in this case, a badly misjudged comparison that reveals nothing of the writer’s character, and matters not in the least in the context of the real world — isn’t considered either.

All we need is a chance to get furious about something, anything. Indignation has become our default setting.

If we require something to be outraged about, we could start with why so many of us are so goddamn angry all the time."

Yeah so why are so many of you guys so ANGRY??!!

Having asked that, I hope Ronald feels the ripping stab of every single pitchfork blade.

That jerk should have been fired when he started saying garbage about Burrows. Now he's comparing hockey players to the men and women who raced into the buildings on 9/11 to save lives. He would never last on any other network but the CBC. He not only embarrasses himsel,f he embarrasses the entire country by being on the State run tv network spouting moronic crap. Please CBC, fire this guy, enough is enough.

We won't hear about it, but he'll have another talk with his bosses who will tell him to be sensitive about stuff like that, he was trying to be all poetic and inspiring, but he lost it and sounded like he was just bullshitting it along after about 10 seconds.